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Final Destination 5: Death comes a callin’

The “Final Destination” films are almost sublime in their simplicity – someone gets an ominous premonition, horrible deaths occur and the survivors of said event are picked off one by one in Rube Goldberg-ian ways. Wash, rinse, repeat.

After three moderately successful installments, the franchise took a big step back with the shoddy “The Final Destination,” which was originally planned for a straight-to-DVD release before a last-minute change of heart by Warner Bros. The lackluster quality showed, but that didn’t stop audiences from making it the most financially successful of the series.

So, it’s no surprise that FINAL DESTINATION 5 (R, 3 stars) got rushed into production. What is a surprise is that the movie reverses the trend of the prior installment and provides 90 minutes of solid entertainment.

Oh, make no mistake, “FD5” is not a good movie in the traditional sense of the word. But horror movie buffs will get a kick out of it thanks to the always inventive death traps and plentiful gore on display.

While on a bus ride to a corporate retreat, wannabe chef Sam (Nicholas D’Agosto) has a vision of a horrific bridge collapse that will kill hundreds of people. When he convinces seven other people to get off the bus seconds before the bridge does go down, he sets into motion the inevitable call of death and its quirky sense of karmic justice.

(As an aside, I’d like to note that filmmakers seem to have stopped trying to hide Vancouver. Either they don’t care or they assume no one has ever left the United States. The Lions Gate Bridge is such a huge landmark and obvious nod to Vancouver, I just assumed the film was set in Canada until they showed New York license plates later on.)

The best parts of these films are trying to figure out which ominous looking ordinary object will be turned into an implement of death, and here, they do a good job of providing some misdirection prior to the over-the-top fatality (Let’s just say you’ll never look at a Buddha the same way).

Tony Todd shows up once again as the ominous town coroner, imparting creepy advice in his chest-rattling baritone. By now you’d have to think the man really loves his job or is working in concert with death given all that he’s seen over the years.

As with any movie these days, “FD5” was in 3-D, and of course, it didn’t add much to the proceedings, which is disappointing considering that director Steven Quale got the job thanks to his experience working on “Avatar.” The opening credits are quite silly, but the rest involves CGI blood splattering toward the screen. I still argue that “My Bloody Valentine 3-D” remains the best use of the technology thus far in horror films.

The characters here are your stock-in-trade caricatures – except this time they aren’t all teens – but man, Miles Fisher stands out not for his acting ability, but his dead ringer match to Tom Cruise. It’s downright creepy to watch him sometimes – it feels as if young Tom has decided to slum it in a horror flick.

It takes a lot to trick me, so I have to give “Final Destination 5” credit for pulling off quite a clever capper that helps place the franchise in an entirely different light – I left a little more jazzed than I had any right to be after the fifth installment of a low-budget film, and hell, that’s more than I can ask for.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.